XML Surface Syntax -- web-calculus

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Model

W3C XML Standard

web-calculus

XML Surface Syntax

2005-04-07

This specification describes the mapping of the web-calculus document model onto the XML surface syntax. The mapping provides interoperation between web-calculus tools and XML-based tools.

Abstract

The web-calculus document model is mapped to the XML infoset.

Overview

Design goals

web-calculus tools generate output that existing XML-based tools can manipulate.
Existing XML-based tools can generate output destined for an application that uses web-calculus tools.
The shared syntax is a usable textual encoding of the web-calculus document model.

Not a subset

This specification maps the web-calculus document model onto the XML infoset, but does not restrict how the resulting XML data is represented in XML syntax. Any valid XML syntax representation of the XML data is a valid web-calculus XML document. This specification does not define a subset of the XML syntax.

Description

A synthetic 'list' element surrounds the entire representation. For each root Node in a Document, a synthetic Branch is created for the XML representation. These synthetic root Branches use Name 'doc' and have an empty Annotation. Upon parsing of the XML representation, the root 'doc' elements are stripped, yielding the root Nodes.

The Branch Name is used as the XML element Name. The Branch Annotation is encoded as XML CharData preceding the element start-tag. The Branch child Node is encoded as the XML element content. The child Node's Schema is encoded in the XML element as an attribute with name 'schema'. The child Node's Annotation is encoded as XML CharData following the end-tag of the last child element in the XML element content.

Example

Below is a simple example of an XML encoded representation of a web-calculus document:

    <list>
    <doc schema="http://example.com/project/NodeSchema">
    First branch comment <branch_name>child node data</branch_name>
    Root node comment
    </doc>
    </list>

The document has a single root Node. The root Node Schema is: 'http://example.com/project/NodeSchema'. The root Node Annotation is: 'Root node comment'. The root Node has a single Branch named 'branch_name', with Annotation: 'First branch comment'. The single Branch points to a child Node with Annotation: 'child node data'. The child Node has an implicit Schema and no Branches.

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